• Reuters, Friday, May 25, 2007 10:47 AM

Facebook on Thursday said it was opening its social-networking platform to allow software developers to create programs within the social network and to allow independents to use Facebook's template as a launch pad for their own social media services. To be sure, it's a bold, open source-like move to Facebook, already the sixth most-visited site on the Web with 24 million monthly unique users. Last year, Facebook opened up its site to users of all ages.

At the product's unveiling, "a carefully orchestrated event with more the air of a college job recruiting fair than a trade show," per Reuters, company CEO Michael Zuckerberg said Facebook had already signed up 65 partners, including Amazon.com, Microsoft, Photobucket, the music discovery program iLike, instant messaging innovator Twitter.com and the Web-calling companies Jajah and Jaxtr. The event featured an eight-hour "hackathon" in which developers previewed software they're creating for the social network. "Until now, social networks have been closed platforms. Today, we're going to end that," said 23-year-old Zuckerberg.

Sounds great, right? But Facebook could eventually have problems with clutter and slowdowns if too many companies decide to create bandwidth-sucking software programs for the social network. Also, security is an issue, and while a company like Microsoft is equipped to deal with opening up its software to developers, Facebook's ability is untested.

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